- Directed by Luke Genton
- Written by Luke Genton
- Stars Cathy Marks, Colton Tran, Rachel Alig
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-KzCoEPZpA
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s an influencer/found footage kind of movie that takes quite a while to get to the horror. Once it does, it’s just okay. A ghost story in an ancient place mixed with modern technology. Not a bad story, but not a lot of surprises.
Spoilery Synopsis
James records an audition, but has too many interruptions as credits roll. Lila calls about the funeral, hoping that James would come, but she can’t. They talk about her “trying to be an influencer.” They’re sisters, and their mother just died. James hated her mother.
James gets a book and goes to Paris for a few months. She lives with a guy named Dash. Her video gets 62 views, so she’s not much of an influencer. Her new job is cleaning up a “murder castle,” which might be her ticket to more views. Dash gives her a pointy, dangerous-looking keychain that we know we’re going to see again later.
We cut to video clips from elsewhere that describe the castle. We see Vincent Price in “House on Haunted Hill” as well as a documentary and a true-crime podcast. The police have never found any bodies but everyone knows the place is haunted.
James goes to interview the former gardener, Fleur, and she’s eager to talk. Fleur tells about her ghostly encounter with a murder victim there. She seems a little unhinged and warns James not to become a lost soul.
As she goes in the gate to the chateau, the creepiest homeless guy ever begs for change. The chateau is huge. The woman who shows her around asks if she has any local friends or family. The woman mentions that there’s a landline in the attic if she needs it.
James records her show, and she explains her camera and all the equipment that she’s using. She goes outside and sees a treehouse and a greenhouse; we get an idea of the place. She also sees a stange shadow.
Next, she tries to contact the spirits (anything other than doing her cleaning job). She definitely hears someone else inside the house, and the front door is wide open. Then she sees terrifying feet and runs out to her car without the keys. She runs through the woods Blair-Witch-Style. Oh, no, this is all fake. She got Dash to wear a mask and help fake the spooks. We see that he’s been with her all along.
The two laugh about what they’ve been up to, but then Dash sees something else, and it’s absolutely not James. They continue to conspire about how to make their video even better. They walk around the house talking to the house and then play back the recording– nothing.
It’s late, and Dash leaves to go home with the car. She’s a little freaked out about staying overnight there alone, but she pretends otherwise.
James hears the phone up in the attic ringing. She goes up and answers the antique phone. It’s James’s dead mother calling. Outside, someone kills Dash.
We flash back to James and Lila dealing with their impatient, annoying mother.
Morning comes, and James sees a strange dog in the house, but only for a moment. She actually starts doing some cleaning. She finishes, goes out for a walk, and finds Dash’s abandoned car with no keys. She assumes Dash is playing a prank.
She meets a woman who says she’s looking for her dog and they go inside to look for it. James sees some weirdness as they look. The woman and the dog are ghosts, and they disappear.
The owner doesn’t return, and Ash is still AWOL, so James is essentially stuck there. She gets another scare, and then a guy named Reggie comes to the door to talk about the ghosts; he’s one of them. James thinks he’s pranking her, but he’s not.
Slowly, James starts to think the ghosts are real, but she’s afraid to go back to the attic to use the phone. She sees several more ghosts, including her dead mother, in the act of killing herself.
She finally runs into Dash’s ghost, who warns her that the house is trying to trick her.
Suddenly, the door opens, and the owner comes in. James needs to stay for her paycheck and to do an interview for James. The woman knows all about the ghosts, “I put some of them here. I killed them.” The coffee that James drank is drugged.
“The house demands human sacrifices. We don’t know why, it just does.” She goes through the list of ghosts we’ve seen, and she’s got a story for each of them. The woman ties up James’s hands and then chases her around the house.
James finds Dash’s keys with the ultraviolet Eiffel Tower and uses it to cut the woman’s throat. The ghosts wanted the woman to confess, the ghost of Dash explains before he vanishes. James plays the final voicemail from her dead mother, and the old woman apologizes and says goodbye.
James calls the police and goes back downstairs to find the dead woman’s body gone. “The house swallowed them all.”
Brian’s Commentary
We watched forty minutes of fake YouTubers being fake and manipulative before anything actually happened. I assume we’re supposed to care about James, but after all the fakeness of the first bit, it’s hard to like her or take her at all seriously.
There are lots of jump scares; some are good and some are cheap tricks. The ending does tie everything up, although there really wasn’t much of a twist or surprise.
It’s fine if you like ghost stories set in the modern day. Nothing special, but decent if you’re into these.
Kevin’s Commentary
It took a long time to get to the horror stuff, and when it did it was just okay. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t feel too invested with James. It was middling, a 6 out of 10.